WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ Surviving in the Magic Academy

Chapter 61

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- Yuna : Is anyone participating in the auction being held in the city this time?

There’s something I need, and if anyone else wants to buy it, I’d like to pool our points and purchase it together.

┗ Hao : A joint purchase? What are you trying to buy?

┗ Yuna : I heard a hundred-year ice crystal harvested from Professor Urian’s tower will be going up at the auction house this time.

┗ Hao : Wow, a hundred-year one must be really expensive.

┗ Yuna : Yes, so I’d like to split the shares according to how many points each person contributes.

┗ Hao : I don’t have enough points, so good luck.

┗ Yuna : Thank you.

┗ Yuna : If anyone needs it, please contact me through my mirror bug.

What was a perfect puppet?

Most of the puppets I made followed nearly the same production process.

First, I carved wood. Wood was what I knew best. That was why most of my puppets had wooden bodies.

Making the body took a great deal of care. Since it was the most important part of a puppet, I always chose the material carefully.

Then I carved the chosen wood with caution. I examined the grain inside it and drew out the best form hidden within.

Sometimes that form was a puppet’s arm. Sometimes it was a head. Sometimes it was even an organ meant to fill the inside.

I learned this on the island. By now, it was a memory from so many years ago that I could no longer tell how long it had been.

That old man was probably already dead. He had been nothing more than a weed who failed to awaken magic.

I felt sorrow at the fleetingness of such a short life. His skill and talent must have vanished with him. Still, in this form at least, they had been passed on to me.

The things I had once understood only vaguely had bloomed anew as I made egos flower inside shadows. Now I could fully understand what that old man had been talking about.

Like that, I followed the grain the wood showed me in full and pulled out the form within it. It was the method the old man had used.

But I did not stop there. I guided that flow a little farther, leading it in the direction I wanted. I brought out the material’s traits more strongly while creating a better grain for it to have.

That was how I made the puppet’s parts, then joined them together. In that way, one puppet was completed.

Next came the work of filling its interior.

The materials used to fill it varied. They could be wood, or they could be something else. They were like the puppet’s organs.

They helped magical power move smoothly and held all sorts of functions. They made up for what simple wood alone could not do.

This was the basic structure I used to make puppets. The puppet I had just made was based on it as well.

I slowly stirred my magical power. The puppet responded and connected to my senses.

It slowly drew its sword. A smooth flow formed, and magical power began to pool inside it.

It was a puppet based on Cassian. To make every part identical, I had perfectly recreated even Cassian’s appearance and build.

This was the new type of puppet I was attempting. If only I could put an ego inside it, it would be even more perfect. But I had no tree stem I could use. That was a real shame.

Among the puppets I currently had, the strongest and most complete was the turtle. It was my means of transportation, my means of defense, and also my workshop. It served those roles very faithfully.

When I made it, I focused only on defense. Its thick shell and body were packed with nothing but defensive magic.

Defensive magic suited me quite well, too. Since I had covered its entire body in that kind of magic, it boasted the strongest defenses among all my puppets.

And then there were its materials.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that the most expensive materials I had gathered so far were all inside that shell. Ah, though now I did have the wraith tree. Excluding that, everything was in there.

After I steadily built up its shell, it gained enough sturdiness to protect its body in any lecture. Even I could not put a scratch on it.

The only reason I invested so much into it was to survive lectures. After coming to the university, the only crises I had faced were the magical beasts I encountered in class.

Because of that, all it could do was endure. It had only one way to attack, which was crushing things with its overwhelming mass.

Against small magical beasts, that was enough. Against mages, it was lacking.

To a mage, it was nothing more than sturdy junk. A huge, obstructive target.

That was why it could not be a threat to others. I needed a puppet made to fight mages, one built purely for attack.

I carefully manipulated my magical power. The puppet opened its eyes. Then the magical power inside its sword began to erupt explosively.

It raised the sword and slashed straight down.

At the same time, the puppet exploded. It happened in an instant.

I blocked the fragments with the defensive barrier I had prepared in advance.

“As expected, it doesn’t work.”

I looked at the puppet that had shattered to pieces. It had captured Cassian very closely. The flow of Cassian’s magical power, the process of using a sword, even Cassian’s magic.

But it had broken apart without enduring even one simple swing.

I sifted through the remains. I gathered the traces of the explosion and examined the circuit that had been inside.

A bitter smile rose to my lips. It had undergone quite a lot of modification, but its output was still lacking.

My puppets moved based on a mana heart. And that mana heart was based on my tree.

Even if I transformed it into a different shape like this, its foundation still resembled my tree. It could not be helped. This was the form I understood best.

Because of that, its output also resembled mine and was extremely weak. Its strength lay in variety. It could spread shallowly and widely, allowing it to hold many kinds of magic.

But when I tried to push it in only one direction like this, that weakness stood out far too much. I had to solve this somehow.

In truth, there was a clear answer.

I could make the body of the person I wanted to copy directly into a puppet. A mage’s corpse was always good material.

If I used another mage’s corpse, tamed the individual tree inside it, and made that the puppet’s heart, the problem would be solved.

I would be able to use the output that mage originally possessed in full. I had obtained corpses and used them that way a few times before. Back when I was in the slums.

There were quite a few mages lying around there. Mages who still held hope for the university would gather in that place. In a place like that, a mage’s corpse was something you could obtain if you had the money.

The puppets made from them had better output than puppets made simply from wood. But there was a problem.

Each one ate up far too much of my magical power, and back then, their usefulness was vague. What good was strong output? My attack magic was useless.

I had no magic to put inside them. It was not as if I knew the magic those corpses had originally used either.

Now things were different. To the current me, a mage’s corpse was truly no different from a precious treasure.

I did not need to put in my own magic. I could put in someone else’s. I had also found a way to solve the magical power problem.

But this place was the university. There was no way to obtain a corpse.

If I had the corpse of a powerful mage, and if I tamed it into my puppet, my current problem would be solved. What a shame.

So I had to use the next best option. I would use the corpse of a magical beast.

I realized it when I used the wraith tree brain last time. The core part of a powerful magical beast could play the same role as a mage’s tree.

The puppet made from the wraith tree had failed to gain an ego, but it fully retained the traits and power its original material possessed.

I looked at the sphere the turtle was biting and playing with. No. 0 had thrown it to the turtle. The turtle rolled around on the floor with it in its mouth.

It liked that Fake Tree. If it held the sphere in its mouth like that, it could suck in information from both reality and the shadow tree.

The sphere was holding up perfectly fine even inside its mouth. Thinking of that, I had attached a magical beast’s heart this time, but it could not withstand the strain and exploded.

As expected, cheap materials would not do. I needed the corpse of a stronger magical beast.

And I knew where one was.

I checked the mirror bug. It was time to move.

“I’ll be back, so clean this place up for me.”

I said that to No. 0. It nodded. I turned and left the workshop.

My eyes flashed. This time, I would succeed.

With that firm resolve, I headed upstairs.

And then I got beaten again and thrown out.

“Get lost!”

Argh. I clutched my head and rolled down the stairs. My entire body throbbed with pain.

This was my thirtieth failure. I roughly straightened myself out and stood up.

Hm. I really thought it would work this time.

During lunch today, I had done my absolute best to prepare food for Professor. I paid special attention to the meat.

I had used three storm squirrels, each one costing five hundred points. To preserve their freshness as much as possible, I had even put in a request to have them captured alive.

I processed them in advance to bring them to their best state, then cooked them using every method I had. Professor ate them with a look of satisfaction I had never seen before.

I used that opening to quietly ask whether I could take just one treasure from the treasure vault.

And I ended up rolling across the floor just like now. Today made it clear. I had to give up on this. If I kept going, I might really die.

Professor’s obsession with those treasures was stronger and deeper than I expected. It reached the point where I wondered if it would be easier to ask for help with that previous matter instead.

I swallowed my regret.

Many of the treasures Professor had shown in lectures were essences extracted from the corpses of magical beasts. They were objects containing power so strong that the wraith tree could not even compare.

If I made a puppet based on one of those, something incredible would definitely be born. I coveted that power so much that I had clung to Professor for a whole month, but nothing worked.

“So I really have to go there in the end.”

I took a piece of paper out from inside my clothes. The words “Upper-Floor Auction House Admission Ticket” written on it were giving off magical power.

It was something Miryeong had sent. Along with a message saying that if there was something I wanted, Miryeong would even lend me points, and that Miryeong looked forward to working with me in the future.

After looking into it briefly, I learned that this auction was a unique Stalactite City event held once every twenty years. All sorts of items gathered by the Arcana General Trading Company would be put up there.

And among them, the upper-floor auction house was said to be impossible to enter without an admission ticket like this, even if you had points.

I swallowed a bitter smile. Originally, I had not planned to participate in this auction. Honestly, I still did not want to face them.

But now I had no other way left. I might be able to obtain materials for my puppet there.

I slowly examined the admission ticket. It said the auction would begin in two weeks.

Should I at least go take a look? Even if I only watched, there would be no loss. My stomach ached a little at the thought of facing Miryeong again.

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